A third practical corollary of a recognition of the true gregariousness of man is the very obvious one that it is not by any means necessary that suggestion should always act on the side of unreason. The despair of the reformer has always been the irrationality of man, and latterly some have come to regard the future as hopeless until we can breed a rational species. Now, the trouble is not irrationality, not a definite preference for unreason, but suggestibility—that is, a capacity for accepting reason or unreason if it comes from the proper source.
This quality we have seen to be a direct consequence of the social habit, of a single definite instinct, that of gregariousness, the same instinct which makes social life at all possible and altruism a reality.
It does not seem to have been fully understood that if you attack suggestibility by selection—and that is what you do if you breed for rationality—you are attacking gregariousness, for there is at present no adequate evidence that the gregarious instinct is other than a simple character and one which cannot be split up by the breeder. If, then, such an effort in breeding were successful, we should exchange the manageable unreason of man for the inhuman rationality of the tiger.
The solution would seem rather to lie in seeing to it that suggestion always acts on the side of reason; if rationality were once to become really respectable, if we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man’s suggestibility would be turned into advantages. We {46} have seen that suggestion already has begun to act on the side of reason in some small part of the life of the student of science, and it is possible that a highly sanguine prophetic imagination might detect here a germ of future changes.
Again, a fourth corollary of gregariousness in man is the fact expounded many years ago by Pearson that human altruism is a natural instinctive product. The obvious dependence of the evolution of altruism upon increase in knowledge and inter-communication has led to its being regarded as a late and a conscious development—as something in the nature of a judgment by the individual that it pays him to be unselfish. This is an interesting rationalization of the facts because in the sense in which “pay” is meant it is so obviously false. Altruism does not at present, and cannot, pay the individual in anything but feeling, as theory declares it must. It is clear, of course, that as long as altruism is regarded as in the nature of a judgment, the fact is overlooked that necessarily its only reward can be in feeling. Man is altruistic because he must be, not because reason recommends it, for herd suggestion opposes any advance in altruism, and when it can the herd executes the altruist, not of course as such but as an innovator. This is a remarkable instance of the protean character of the gregarious instinct and the complexity it introduces into human affairs, for we see one instinct producing manifestations directly hostile to each other—prompting to ever advancing developments of altruism, while it necessarily leads to any new product of advance being attacked. It shows, moreover, as will be pointed out again later, that a gregarious species rapidly developing a complex society can be saved from inextricable confusion only by the appearance of reason and the application of it to life. {47}
When we remember the fearful repressing force which society has always exercised on new forms of altruism and how constantly the dungeon, the scaffold, and the cross have been the reward of the altruist, we are able to get some conception of the force of the instinctive impulse which has triumphantly defied these terrors, and to appreciate in some slight degree how irresistible an enthusiasm it might become if it were encouraged by the unanimous voice of the herd.
In conclusion we have to deal with one more consequence of the social habit in man, a consequence the discussion of which involves some speculation of a necessarily quite tentative kind.
If we look in a broad, general way at the four instincts which bulk largely in man’s life, namely, those of self-preservation, nutrition, sex, and the herd, we shall see at once that there is a striking difference between the mode of action of the first three and that of the last. The first three, which we may, for convenience and without prejudice, call the primitive instincts, have in common the characteristic of attaining their maximal activities only over short periods and in special sets of circumstances, and of being fundamentally pleasant to yield to. They do not remain in action concurrently, but when the circumstances are appropriate for the yielding to one, the others automatically fall into the background, and the governing impulse is absolute master. Thus these instincts cannot be supposed at all frequently to conflict amongst themselves, and the animal possessing them alone, however highly developed his consciousness might be, would lead a life emotionally quite simple, for at any given moment he would necessarily be doing what he most wanted to do. We may, therefore, imagine him to be endowed with the feelings of free-will and reality to a superb degree, wholly unperplexed by doubt and wholly secure in his unity of purpose. {48}
The appearance of the fourth instinct, however, introduces a profound change, for this instinct has the characteristic that it exercises a controlling power upon the individual from without. In the case of the solitary animal yielding to instinct the act itself is pleasant, and the whole creature, as it were body and soul, pours itself out in one smooth concurrence of reaction. With the social animal controlled by herd instinct it is not the actual deed which is instinctively done, but the order to do it which is instinctively obeyed. The deed, being ordained from without, may actually be unpleasant, and so be resisted from the individual side and yet be forced instinctively into execution. The instinctive act seems to have been too much associated in current thought with the idea of yielding to an impulse irresistibly pleasant to the body, yet it is very obvious that herd instinct at once introduces a mechanism by which the sanctions of instinct are conferred upon acts by no means necessarily acceptable to the body or mind. This, of course, involves an enormous increase of the range through which instinct can be made use of. Its appearance marks the beginning of the multifarious activities of man and of his stupendous success as a species; but a spectator watching the process at its outset, had he been interested in the destiny of the race, might have felt a pang of apprehension when he realized how momentous was the divorce which had been accomplished between instinct and individual desire. Instinctive acts are still done because they are based on “a priori syntheses of the most perfect sort,” but they are no longer necessarily pleasant. Duty has first appeared in the world, and with it the age-long conflict which is described in the memorable words of Paul: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members {49} warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Into the features and consequences of this conflict it is now necessary for us to probe a little farther.